Religion and Its Other. - Secular and Sacral Concepts and Practices in Interaction (Eigene und fremde Welten, Band 8)

Kabbalah and the Construction of Jewish Mysticism (S. 143-144)

During the 13th century, various cultural practices were perceived and constructed as belonging to an ancient, esoteric and sacred Jewish tradition, called »Kabbalah« (a Hebrew word that signi.es »reception« or »something received«). Since then, down to our own day, di.erent theories and rituals, dealing with diverse topics such as the structure of the Divine system, the signi.cance of Jewish law, the power of divine names, and the ways to attain prophetic revelations were developed and transmitted as belonging to this ancient body of knowledge. Up until the 16th century, Kabbalah was studied and practiced mostly within elite Jewish circles on the Iberian Peninsula. Following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal, and the development of print culture, Kabbalistic theories and practices were dispersed among Jewish intellectual elites in most Jewish communities around the world. In this period, Christian scholars also studied Kabbalistic texts, and Christian forms of Kabbalah were developed.

During the 17th and 18th century, Kabbalistic theories and practices were no longer restricted to select circles, but transmitted and practiced in di.erent forms in all segments of the Jewish population. Since the late 18th century, Jewish circles in Western and Eastern Europe that adopted the cultural values of the Enlightenment, rejected vehemently the Kabbalah and engaged in a cultural struggle against its followers, mostly against the East European Hasidic movement. Kabbalah was portrayed by members of the Jewish enlightenment movement, the Haskala, as an irrational, immoral and Oriental component of Judaism that should be purged in order to enable the restoration of an enlightened Judaism and its integration into modern Western Europe.

Under the impact of the Jewish enlightenment movement, Kabbalah was rejected from the literary canons and religious practices of Jewish circles that adopted modern European values and life forms. Nonetheless, Kabbalah maintained its central place in the cultural practices of Jewish groups that were opposed to, or were less in.uenced by Western modern values, mostly the Hasidic circles in Eastern Europe, and the Jewish communities in Asia and North Africa. Kabbalah is still central today among the descendents of these groups, in Israel and the United States. Apart from the centrality of Kabbalah in these traditional circles, in recent years there is a considerable revival of interest in Kabbalah, in other sectors of Israeli Jewish society and of Jewish communities outside of Israel, as well as in Western culture in general.

In the second half of the 19th century, some Jewish intellectuals who stemmed from the circles of the Haskala movement – and were integrated in European culture – developed a more positive perception of Kabbalah and Hasidism. These scholars accepted the »enlightened« representation of Kabbalah as irrational and Oriental, but, operating from a romantic and national perspective, regarded these characteristics as positive, rather than negative attributes.

In this context, Jewish scholars borrowed the depiction of Kabbalah as »mystical theology « from earlier Christian Kabbalists and Theosophists, and identi.ed Kabbalah and Hasidism, as well as some other Jewish cultural formations, as mystical phenomena. Gradually, the term «Jewish mysticism» became prevalent and was accepted as the main category under which Kabbalah was described, discussed, and researched in the 20th century.5 The perception of Kabbalah and Hasidism as Jewish expressions of a universal mystical phenomenon still dictates the academic study of Kabbalah around the world, and the way Kabbalah is perceived in contemporary Western culture.